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Hip-hip-hooray. Fallout 3’s official mod tool is out, and I’m celebrating by badly quoting Tina Turner songs. I’m far too stupid to use the construction kit myself, but I’m dead excited to see what Fallout 3’s community (both those who love and those who want to see Bethesda strung up by the nipples for it) comes up with. Oblivion was massively enhanced by its mods, but Fallout 3’s wilder, weirder world means there’s room for all manner of madness.
Specifically, I want to see cities. Not small, vaguely irritating hamlets like Megaton or unpopulated ruins like DC, but proper (decaying) urban sprawl, filled with life and quests. I want a city I can get lost in, a city offering quests that don’t involve leaving, walking halfway across the world and shooting a couple of super-mutants, a city full of people and secrets and stuff to steal. A tall order for sure, but those infamously passionate Fallout 1 and 2 fans are bound to be thinking something similar. Someone’s bound to have a crack at it. The thing with Fallout 3 is it feels like it’s got the underlying structure it should, but not always the content: the GECK + a few dedicated fans means that’s almost certainly going to change.

Bets, then, on how long before we see Fallout 1 and 2 remade in Fallout 3? Oh, and grab the 8Mb of GECKy goodness from here. There’s also a nascent wiki if you’re thinking of building a mod yourself.

I’m not sure if burgeoning urban landscapes are the best idea for a post-apocalyptic setting, Alec. Then again, Fallout 3’s PA feel was never that convincing…

I also don’t really get the need to remake Fallout 1/2 into Fallout 3. If Fallout 3 had a superior p&p-emulating engine then sure, but Fallout 3 is an FPSRPG, and Fallout 1/2 are not.

That said, let’s hope modding turns up some good stuff, both in redoing the existing game as in adding materials. There’s no doubt the spirit is there, the work that the Fallout 3 Nexus people did even before the GECK is insane.

It might not take that much to add a bit more life for starters. Add some more NPCs to places like Rivet City. Have more neutral NPCs wandering the world – perhaps have caravans escorting Brahmin or something.

Of course, the first mod they need is a decent level balancing mod so that you haven’t hit level 20 before you’ve explored more than a third of the map.

Actually there are a huge amount of fixes/content I think it needs, but I don’t know how much will be possible with the GECK.

ModDB has had up for a few weeks already some pre-GECK mods that affect level balancing and stuff. My favorite is the increased run speed mod which turns your characters original top speed of “leisurely stroll” into “run like you’re being chased by a deathclaw OH WAIT”…

I’m really looking forward to seeing what modders do with FO3. Still can’t really say why but the vanilla game failed to grab me at all. I played about 10 hours or so but I’ve not picked it up since. I’d particularly like to see a bigger world and some more interesting combat and enemy AI.

Checking out the Google, looks like I’m not the only one who would like to see a Fist of the North Star mod for FO3. But I’m too lazy and tech-clumsy to do it myself. Already played through the game “seriously” several times, so would much rather cut loose with the crazy at this point.

Because, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t wanna play as Kenshiro? The man could take down a Super Mutant Behemoth with his bare hands. (Skip ahead to 3:15) And for a lot of nerd-folk, he’s the definitive post-apocalyptic hero. Because, as it turns out, our kind happen to be pretty darn fond of head-sploding in our media.

VATS is basically FotNS-style over-the-top violence, except taken kind of seriously. And the Fallout universe in general is at least as ludicrous as Fist of the North Star. Just with a different kind of retro feel and gauss rifles to go along with the Bloody Mess punches.

(Come to think of it, just modding the funky fight music in to play during VATS would be enough. Or in the old Fallouts, too.)

I’m excited by all prospects given by the GECK (except furries/nudes/etc). Just like Oblivion, given enough time, there’ll be enough variation/selection of mods to make anyone enjoy this game a lot more.

Just a matter of seeing what the patches/DLC will end up like. Speaking of, are we (by we, I mean the PC) expected to pay for the DLC as with Oblivion?

So far all the quests I’ve done (mostly sidequests, saving the main for later) have had a clear good and bad path. I’d like to see some that leave players scratching their heads and wondering what the person they are pretending to be should do. You know, roleplaying.

Give me quests that are shades of grey, not black or white, where players will be arguing about what was right on forums for years to come. Give me dilemmas where you choose between saving the village or saving your girlfriend. If you can attach a numeric karma adjustment to a quest ending, it’s too simple.

I like F3 a lot. The slick presentation is nice, and I can’t fault the quantity, and the writing/structure is a big advance on Oblivion’s dozens of inconsequential microquests. But a bit more hand wringing in the storyline decisions would not go amiss.

Morte be right. Not enough grey. I want to save my girlfriend at the cost of the village only for her to turn her back on me. Suddenly, the bad karma hit from saving my girlfriend because I love her, rather than the village comes back to haunt me! Curveball results FTW!

Very few games create compelling moral dilemmas in games. Right now I can only think of Obsidian’s titles (especially KOTOR 2), Planescape Torment and Shadow of the Colossus (the latter doesn’t even give you a choice, yet it’s one of the best “moral dilemma” games I’ve played).

Most companies just go for the “1) Help the old lady across the street, 2) Grind her bones into powder and then piss on the powder while laughing maniacally, 3) Ignore her and continue along the way” type of moral dilemmas.

What I think would be nice is if they could make the various critters actually territorial in the outside world. I mean, one gunshot at a random thing and often they come running or see you and come running for miles around.

What you want Alec is exactly what F3 should have had in the first. Don’t know what it is about Bethesda games but they never “work” for me. I think it’s the Gamebyro engine. It’s like walking around in a cardboard cutout.

“G.E.C.K. back, G.E.C.K. back, G.E.C.K. back to where you once belonged”…” (cheers, McCartney) or “Harder, G.E.C.K.er, Faster, Stronger”, maybe? Terrible, I know :)

A quick poke around in the contents of the main file reveals, as usual, a number of cool items that Bethesda decided not to equip anyone with in game, like some interesting Armour/clothing. Also, on the edit tab for items there’s tickboxes for whether the item is playable, power armour or if it modulates voices (like BoS helmets). so, presumably, you can modify Power Armour to be wearable before getting the ability to do so, and muck around with character voices by ticking the box on their gear.

It’s basically the TES construction kit with a few extra tweaks here and there, so it should be interesting to see what people start to come up with. Bigger bloody Vaults, for a start- Vault Tec didn’t have triple figure populations in mind when they built the damn things, that’s for sure…

Doug F said: “I’m guessing that the people who are complaining about “no shades of grey” haven’t done the Tenpenny/Ghouls quest chain, or if they have, haven’t returned to the tower after taking the “good” path?”

Ah, thanks for the reminder Doug. Actually I have encountered that quest, and before it got going I decided that both sides were assholes and I was washing my hands of them. So I didn’t really “do” it, just started it and walked off. That was pretty good, so I guess I should take back a little of what I said. I’d like to see lots more quests like that.

It does make me smile a bit, thinking about when everyone was like “Bethesda’s not releasing a construction set for Fallout 3! They’re just trying to sell us more downloadable content at the expense of crippling the mod community. And appealing to those bastard console players.”

Then Bethesda said “No, we’re totally releasing a construction set, but it takes a bit of work, so we’re making sure it’s ready.” At which point everyone else was all “Bee Ess! Specifically, Corporate BS! You’re just trying to stall us while you sell us downloadable content.”

But, I guess they were planning to release it, after all, and were actually just getting it ready pre-release. Go figure.

. . .

In sort of related news, I installed Morrowind the other day, and I’ve been smiling since.

I did some reading up on the background for the Fallout world, apparently theres supposed to be a race of sentient racoons (I kid you not), never got implemented though I think they were being considered for Fallout 2.

Problem is, if anyone, anyone tried to implement them, developer or otherwise, I doubt they’d be as awesome as they ought to be in principle and I mean that not just in terms of appearence but also characterisation, attention to detail in their cultural design and so on. I’m not going to try and claim I think I could pull it off either, by the way, I’m just saying I doubt it’ll be as good as it ought to be if someone tried to pull it off.

Some ideas are only good on paper, and all that. I’d love to be proved wrong, but I doubt I would.

Tinkering with the GECK now, seeing a lot of variables that may or may not have to do with what I’m trying to accomplish which is simply reducing the rate at which I gain levels. I don’t have enough interest in Fallout 3 to experiment right now.

Still this is good news, hopefully someone is hard at work right now making the game worth replaying.

@Bhlaab: That clarifies it a bit, thanks. I was sort of doubtful about it myself, so its a relief to hear that it was cut for good reason, rather than a case of just not having the time/resources to add it.